Why Write?
Composition Posted: 575 words
Being a cheerful (and human) defense of the Christian right and obligation to write, to read, and to create.
We lay the sins and the struggles of the human race on the page as a prayer. In writing, we help ourselves, and touch others who are tracing the same thread. In reading we find the steps of the saints and the non-saints who’ve walked these heavy-trodden paths before us. Like Christian, we wander, and not every step is well-placed.
This whole world cries out in pangs of childbirth but while we grieve, our grief will turn to joy. We have faith in the new that is coming. Our mouths will be filled with laughter – our tongues loosed, with joy.
Why?
What is there to celebrate in this world? Wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from this body of death, that clings to me, that hangs heavy on me? Who shall deliver me from this mind of rebellion, that lies to me, that leads me astray, that whispers apathy and void in my heart?
This thread that unraveled the veil feels weak, and lonely, and frayed most of the time. But we do not lose heart. We are being renewed day by day. Renewed by the echoes of Aslan, the transformation of Orual, and the hope of a Ransom.
Because, like Sam said, “What has happened to the world? Is everything sad going to come untrue?”
We read to remind ourselves of the Happy Beginning that we know is going to come. For, behold, I am making all things new. It is done, we are told, it is finished, he has done it. Let your weary hearts rejoice.
This whole existence: our whole life: will end up being fiction. All will be made new, and we will remember our lives (all the living and breathing and dying and eating and sleeping and caring and crying) as a mist that vanishes before the dawn. As if from a dream – or a dream of a dream.
We walk in a world, bound to a different Government, living novels who serve the Word, living out His kingdom and His power and His glory with every diaper that we change and every page that we turn. Yes, every action is sacred, and yes, we lift our stories on the page and in each day as a fragrant offering.
Language is our birthright, and we serve the Word.
All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. Proust’s million were not made, without him. Rodenberry’s future was not made, without him. Rambles about brambles on a mountain in Georgia were not made, apart from him.
In him we live, we move, and we have our being.
We hold onto our thread and we spool out our lives, because there are no Fates, no sister to cut the cord, but with the sword from his mouth he will cut the cord and we will burst
forth, emerge,
into a screaming whiteness more brilliant than anything we’ve ever seen before.
The Great Physician holds us up to the light, with that cord cut, we lose all ties to the world that we have known, the Reality that is even now passing away like a mist.
And we will walk into the light like toddlers learning to step and we will live.
Everything sad will come untrue.
Come quickly, Jesus.
Amen.